The Winds of Change (23 page)

‘Anyway, it’s not nearly as bad as stealing children.’

‘Children? No, of course not, but I don’t know anybody who would go around stealing children.’

‘I do.’ Her voice grew smaller again as if it were trying to squeeze itself into a tiny place. ‘It’s who took Flora. It’s the Child Thief.’ She turned her head slowly to look Jury in the eye. ‘He only takes children.’

Jury frowned. ‘Are you afraid he could take you?’ She looked at Roy and then reached down to pet him. It was a way of keeping her face hidden. ‘I don’t know. I think he takes only pretty ones.’

Jury closed his eyes against the sadness of that stratagem.

When he opened them she was turned to him, adjusting her glasses, brushing the fringe up out of her eyes. These two movements he knew were meant to give him a better look at her face, to judge the danger she might be in.

Not much of a choice for him: if you’re pretty you get stolen; if you aren’t.., well, where’s the consolation in that? He turned this over. ‘If you keep the glasses ‘on at all times and let the fringe hide your eyes, you’ll probably’ be safe.’

When the implications of this came clear, she nodded. She even smiled a little.

Jury asked, ‘But this Child Thief. What does he do with the children he steals?’

‘He takes them home and.., either he locks them up in the cellar where the rats are, or he shoves them in the attic that’s always dark or sometimes he chains them to a post in the back garden and they have to stand in the snow.’ She paused. ‘Or he lets them live in the house and even gives them their own room. But then he doesn’t talk to them, and if they talk to him’–she looked at Jury again–’he doesn’t answer.’

Her skirt had been twisted more tightly than Roy’s bit of rope. ‘And she has to go all her life never talking to anyone. Never.’ Jury noticed it had changed from ‘them’ to ‘she.’ It was the silent treatment that she would have to endure if the Child Thief got her.

She felt guilty. Jury was sure, but about what? Had she done something to Flora in those visits Mary Scott had paid to Little Comfort? Had she told someone about their visits to Heligan? ‘Did you like Flora?’

‘Kind of. A bit.’ She slid farther down on the bench, her legs out.

Jury waited.

‘There were times I couldn’t stand her.’

‘Times I can’t stand him, either.’ Jury nodded toward the path along which Melrose Plant was approaching.

Lulu giggled. It was an authentic child-delighted giggle. Her eyes sparked; she covered her mouth with her hand. ‘But he’s your friend.’ Here was a testing of the friendship waters in general.

‘Well? Do friends like each other all of the time?’ She shook her head vigorously, swinging her lank hair. Jury wondered why her aunt didn’t have something done to it so that it set off her face to more advantage.

Melrose stood there, looking from one to the other. ‘You two have been sitting here doing nothing while I’ve been bedding and weeding–and so forth.’

‘No, you haven’t. You’ve been talking to the Macmillan girl,’ said Jury.

‘Lulu!’ Rebecca Owen’s voice came from the door of the kitchen. She was motioning for Lulu to come in.

Lulu looked less than pleased. ‘I’m supposed to go in for lunch.’ With little enthusiasm, she got up; she said good-bye.

Watching her run off, Melrose said, ‘Where does she get her energy?’

‘She didn’t get it from me.’ Jury slapped the bench and got up.

‘I’m off to London. I need to talk to Viktor Baumann again. Viktor’s got his finger in a lot of pies, I think.’

‘I can barely keep a finger in one. Couldn’t we have found a ruse for my being here that’s better than a turf expert?’

‘I expect I could’ve. That’s just what came to mind.’
 

Melrose gave him a look. ‘Richard, that’s not the first thing that comes to anybody’s mind.’

‘When they think of you it is.’

24

Alice Miers sat in the living room of her fine house in Belgravia looking intently, even squinting, through her narrow reading glasses at the photograph, then handed it back to Richard Jury with a shake of her head. ‘I don’t know, Superintendent; I’ve never to my knowledge seen her before.’ Jury took back the photo. He had always wondered what that qualifying ‘to my knowledge’ meant. It suggested to him a hesitancy, as if the person being questioned felt some outside agency, some broader ‘knowledge’ would explain it.

‘You’re sure?’

‘No. But only because I’m not absolutely sure of anything.’ She smiled.

Jury’s smile answered her own, except that his wasn’t wan.

‘She has something to do with my daughter?’

‘It would appear so.’

‘Declan doesn’t have any idea?’

‘No. She might have come out of the past.’

‘That’s reasonable.’ She sat chin in hand, looking wide eyed.

Again he smiled. She was having a joke at his expense, but he hardly cared. He told her the circumstances surrounding this dead woman’s appearance.

Alice Miers sat back. ‘It’s not strange that Mary might have come across an old acquaintance, but it certainly is strange she would have lied to Declan. Roedean. That’s such an idiotic lie. Too easy to check, as you already know.’

‘To credit your daughter with some sense, though, she’d have no reason to believe anyone would check. Not her husband, certainly.

He’s a man with a great respect for privacy. And she wouldn’t be anticipating any investigation. So ‘old school chum’ would seem to be an easy explanation.’

‘You’re right about Declan. It’s one of his great qualities. And he has many of those.’ She sat back, hands folded in her lap. ‘Perhaps because of that, he’s a person one shouldn’t want to practice subterfuge upon.’ She turned her face toward the window and the garden beyond it. ‘Our own lives appear to us as so discontinuous-one thing ends, another begins, it’s broken off and something else comes along–marriage, divorce, remarriage, a child.., death.’ Here she paused and looked at the fire. ‘And nothing seems to run through it. But with family, something does run through it, something does cohere. A family is ballast.’

‘But if you don’t get along with other members of it?’ She rolled her eyes, fine gray eyes set deep in her head, making the cheekbones even more pronounced. ‘You’re not going to say ‘dysfunctional’? We used to say ‘unhappy.’ Tolstoy certainly did.

But none of those good old words are invited to the party anymore.

They’re vague, abstract. But ‘dysfunctional’ is so concrete, isn’t it? It sounds like something gone wrong in a car’s electrical system, or a hangover. When applied to such a protean concept as family, though, it means nothing more than: ‘unhappy.’ At any rate, my harangue here means simply that family is important. It astonishes me that people expect the members of a family to get along and when they don’t get along, they’ve let us down. I always think of a family as being greater than the sum of its parts. Something runs through it, as I said, like the pattern in this carpet.’ Here she looked down and traced its feathery green fronds with her shoe.

Jury rested his head against the back of his chair. ‘Wouldn’t some say that what runs through the family is simply blood?’

‘Perhaps. But Declan isn’t a blood relative, and I feel tied to him.’ She rose. ‘No, don’t get up; I’m just going to get the coffee. You’ll have some?’

‘I certainly will.’

She smiled and left the room.

In her absence Jury rose and walked around. Across from the fireplace was a wall of photographs. When he saw such incontrovertible evidence of what she’d been talking about–family–it left him feeling bereft again, for there had been no family other than his cousin in Yorkshire, and no photos other than the two he’d taken away with him of his mother and father. Here was Alice with dozens, each framed and in its place, all up and probably in some kind of order. There were many pictures of her daughter Mary and of Mary and Declan. Then came half a dozen with Flora taken with several different people. He sighed. Incontrovertible evidence, true. But what Alice Miers had forgotten was that some people had families, but some people didn’t.

The house was narrow, but deep. At the other end French doors led out to a garden that looked green now with winter plants.

Beside the fireplace a longcase clock decorated in green and gold chinoiserie had been furnishing a soft tick of background music.

Over the pale marble mantel hung a large oval mirror. He looked at himself thinking he looked pretty much as usual,

Alice returned carrying a humble black tin tray that held a Thermos of coffee, mugs, sugar and milk. Jury rather liked this presentation, liked it more than a silver coffee service, which made him feel he must learn the art of drinking all over again. They reseated themselves.

‘Why are you smiling? Do not laugh at my Thermos. Either don’t or go and get a tea cozy. They’re next to worthless.’ She held the jug aloft. ‘Milk? Sugar?’

‘Yes, thanks, a lot of both.’ He leaned forward to take the mug.

He said, ‘Look, I know this is a painful subject, but you must have given a lot of thought to what happened to your granddaughter.’ She held his eyes as if glancing away might make him vanish, much in the way of what he thought Lulu feared, and she’d be left with only the Thermos for comfort. ‘Yes. I thought about it. I think about it. All the time.’

‘This woman’s murder is tied to Flora’s disappearance, at least I think so.’

The police photo was still lying on the table, beside the tray.

Alice picked it up again. ‘She doesn’t look the type to be leaving broken hearts in her wake. But perhaps that’s shallow. Just because she wasn’t pretty.’ She shrugged. ‘Strange, isn’t it?’

‘To say the least. What do you make of Mary’s secrecy?’

‘Well, certainly she didn’t want Declan to know something and perhaps that ‘something’ caused this woman’s murder. Or was related to it somehow.’

‘She visited Angel Gate, too. The cook, Dora Stout, saw her. Caught a glimpse, anyway.’

Alice was yet more surprised. ‘I didn’t know that. And did she tell Declan?’

Jury shook his head. ‘No. He found out only when Mrs. Stout told the Devon and Cornwall police.’

Shaking her head, she looked again at the pattern in the carpet. ‘That makes me feel extremely sad. Here’s Declan, probably the most trustworthy and generous hearted of anyone I know, and whatever it was, that was kept from him. This woman turns up a second time and Declan still didn’t know about her?’
 

Jury changed course. ‘Did you see your granddaughter often?’

‘Not as often as I’d’ve liked. I can’t travel; doctor’s orders. I did, of course, when Flora...’ Her voice trailed off, came back. ‘Mary and Declan were very good about bringing Flora to me. Declan still is. I mean.., was.’

‘You knew Rebecca Owen, didn’t you, when she was working for your daughter and Viktor Baumann?’

‘She’s a grand person; she really is. I thought it was lucky she was there when Mary was married to him. Rebecca seemed to give Mary some strength, something like that. With Viktor, one would need it.’ Alice sipped from her mug.

‘Not the most popular person in this account.’

She made a noise in her throat. ‘He was awful. I’ve never known anyone so cold but who seems quite charming. God, but I was relieved when she got out of that marriage.’ She looked back at the garden. ‘But people like Viktor cast a long shadow. They can reach out wherever they are and grab you. And keep hold. Declan wanted to adopt Flora but I knew Viktor would never agree to that.’ Alice rested her chin in her hand, cupping it. ‘She’d be seven now. Any knock on the door when I’m not expecting anyone, any phone call where I hear a stranger’s voice ... my heart stops. I think it will be news of Flora.’ She sighed. ‘Hope isn’t realistic, neither is faith, but you still have it. How could I possibly stop hoping, especially since I don’t know why she disappeared in the first place? One possible explanation is that someone took her to raise as their own. I can see by your expression you don’t agree.’ She smiled.

‘I must go.’ It was already darkening. He could see the gathering shadows through the French doors at the rear of the house. For some reason he couldn’t have explained, he had a yearning to see this space. Now, with his coat on, he nodded toward it. ‘Could I see the garden?’

Surprised, she said, ‘Why, of course.’ Alice rose from the sofa and they walked down the narrow hall. She took a heavy sweater from a row of wooden pegs by the French doors. She then opened the door, stepped out and waited for Jury.

25

Carole-anne sat in Jury’s flat, slathering shrimp-pink varnish on her toes. Her chin was on her knee and for one swift second she reminded Jury of Lulu, when the two couldn’t have been more different, and not just age-wise. Carole-anne’s hair was ginger, although that hardly described it: Santa Fe sunset colored was better, and her eyes were a ferocious blue, burning turquoise right now as she revved up again with her complaint that Richard Jury was lately too much among the seldom seen.

‘And poor Mrs. W–’

This was Mrs. Wasserman, in the garden flat, whose every breath, to hear Carole-anne tell it, depended on Jury’s presence here in Islington.